Intertubez, meet Fitzherbert

aka: #33-- get an indoor plant and keep it alive for 6 months.

Fitzherbert has bravely volunteered for this effort with nary a peep. Actually, I think his odds of making it 6 months or more are pretty darn good.

You see, once upon a time, in a land far far away, I had another plant named Bob. And he survived more than 3 years. If you know of my ::ahem:: record with outdoor plants, I could see how you would find this hard to believe.

Alas, it's the truth. And now Fitzherbert will enjoy that long a life (maybe even more!) with me and The Husband.

The first goal: February 26th, 2011.

The second goal: to infinity and beyond!

(Also? It's surprisingly challenging to wrangle Fitzherbert for a snapshot. I guess he's just camera shy...)

Lemon mimosas

French 75 from Commander's Palace, aka: the *real* motivation behind last weekend's party.

The Husband and I were so lucky to be able to enjoy brunch at Commander's Palace when we visited New Orleans last month. It was there that I discovered this delish little drink. So delish, in fact, that I then and there declared my drink for the rest of the summer. The French 75. Champagne + lemon simple syrup + gin = perfection. Who knew?

When we planned our little Splash, Sip & See! party (are you tired of hearing about it yet? No? Good. lol.), I wanted to have this drink and figured that we could also serve regular boring mimosas, too.

However. We are not gin drinkers. Amongst the rum, vodka, scotch, wines, bourbon and lord knows what else, there's a serious gin deficiency in our liquor cabinent.

So, I attempted a French 76, which is the vodka version, and so very not the same.

And thus, the lemon mimosa was born. I'm sure it has a real name. Alas, I do not know it.

Lemon Mimosa
One regular, run of the mill ice cube of lemon simple syrup
One glass of champagne/sparkling wine

1. Pour one flute of champagne/sparkling wine, leave a little room at the top
2. Add cube of lemon simple syrup, wait for it to melt (don't worry, your wine will still stay cold)
3. Enjoy!

Lemon Simple Syrup
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
1 1/4 cups lemon juice (about 7 large lemons)

1. In a medium saucepan, heat and stir water and sugar over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat; cool 20 minutes.
2. Add citrus peel and juice to sugar mixture. Pour into a jar; cover and chill up to 3 days. Or, pour into ice cube trays (one batch will fill about 2.5 trays) and freeze. Pop cubes into ziplocs and enjoy single serve lemonade or lemon mimosas whenever you like!

**** Wanna make a whole pitcher of lemon mimosas? Just up the number of cubes to about 8 per bottle of champagne/sparkling wine. ****

Lemon Cupcakes

Score one for another not-so-fab photo. ::le sigh::

Anyway, I made these cupcakes from a cake recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my mom sent me. I've been on a bit of a lemon/citrus kick lately and these just called to me. The cake part is a smidge dry and the cream cheese frosting not as lemon-y as I wanted (difficult to please, much? no?) but the cupcakes disappeared from the party almost as quickly as the easy cheese danishes, so...

One note: at one point the batter will look like your eggs curdled in it. Yipes! If I hadn't known about this from Ina's coconut cake recipe, I probably would have cried and tossed it out to start over. Don't! It'll thicken up properly after you add the flour mixture.

One more note: I modified the recipe into cupcakes, the original cake recipe is what appears here. I can't really vouch for anything related to the lemon curd or layering, just FYI.

Triple-Layer Lemon Cake
1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons finely shredded lemon peel
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1 cup lemon curd
Cream cheese frosting

1. Allow butter and eggs to stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, grease and lightly flour three 9x1 1/2 inch round cake pans. (Alternatively, place paper liners in cupcake pans.) In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar, lemon peel and lemon juice; beat until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk/sour milk to egg mixture, beating on low speed after each addition until just combined. (Easiest way to do this? Add half the flour mixture, then all the buttermilk/sour milk, and finish with rest of flour mixture.) Pour into prepared pans.

3. Bake in 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near centers comes out clean. Cool cake layers in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove cake layers from pans. Cool thoroughly on racks.

4. To assemble, place a cake layer on a cake plate. Spread half of the lemon curd. Top with the second cake layer, spread with remaining lemon curd. Top with the third cake layer. Frost top and sides with cream cheese frosting. Cover and store in refrigerator for up to 3 days. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before serving.

Garbanzo Bean Salad: featuring the worst food picture ever!

I am admittedly terrible at recording my recipes. When any of my friends ask me for a copy of the recipe I used for X, Y, Z the response is usually this: "I... uh... well, I think I used... no. That's not right. Huh. What did I put in there?"

On the off chance I actually remember the ingredients, I'll be hard pressed to remember the amounts of them. Ooops.

However! When prepping for our little "Splash, Sip & See!" party, I needed to gather the ingredients for my garbanzo bean salad, thus, for the first time ever, writing down all the ingredients for a recipe that I made up! Hizzah! Progress!

This salad is best made a couple days before you plan to serve it and is so very perfect for a hot summer day. It doesn't last in our house very long, either, because someone (me) eats it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Garbanzo Bean Salad:
2 cans of garbanzo beans/chickpeas (unsalted, preferred)
1 can of artichoke hearts
1 jar of roasted red peppers
1/2 jar of garlic stuffed green olives
Cherry tomatoes (as many or as few as you like)
Extra virgin olive oil
Squeeze of lemon juice (to taste)
Salt and pepper (to taste)

1. Rinse the garbanzo beans and place in a medium sized bowl (you want enough room to stir/mix the ingredients)
2. Quarter the artichoke hearts and add to the garbanzo beans
3. Rinse the roasted red peppers, and cut/slice into 1.5 inch pieces. Add to the bowl.
4. Cut the olives: first in half and then slice. Add to bowl.
5. Cut the cherry tomatoes to whatever size you like. I like them halved then sliced like the olives. Add to bowl.
6. Add a generous turn or two of olive oil around the bowl.
7. A squeeze of lemon to taste.
8. Salt and pepper to taste.
9. Stir, chill for at least a few hours, and
10. Enjoy!












Sorry for the terrible photo. It tastes waaaaay better than this picture looks!

A little bit of eye candy for Friday

Y'all. I just stumbled upon this jewelry designer and oh. my. gawd. Just a wee bit out of my budget, but still lovely to drool over dream about. Dear Mr. Shaesby, if you would like me to test your designs for, you know, structural integrity and whatnot, I'm available! See more Shaesby designs here.

The prodigals return to NOLA- day one

After an eventful arrival and a few hours without our luggage, the Husband acquiesced and gave the control of our first day to me. Oh, the joy, the glee, the fabulousness of being in control! Hai, welcome to my bloggy-blog, I am a control freak as you shall learn when you stick around.

Yay, very-good-hubby!

Naturally, the first thing a gal wants when she returns to the Crescent City are beignets. And the bestest beignets come from Cafe du Monde. Naturally.

::ahem:: Blogspot, 'sup? Let me upload my peeectures, darn it. Grrrr...

Okay. Maybe we're back. Maybe we even have pictures.

We do! We do have pictures! Hurrah! Hello, Husband. Also, Cafe du Monde.
We skipped the line using an old trick I learned as a college student. The place was packed, as per usual, but I found a table for us right away. Good thing, too, because *someone* told me later that he was prepared to put his foot down if we had to wait in that line. But I won't say who.

Definitely not this guy. Nuh-uh. Look how happy he is with our wee plate of beignets and his orange juice. How can you not love that face?

And, speaking of happy... Cafe au lait: check. Hot beignets: check. Copious amounts of powdered sugar: check. Empty belly: not for long!

Verra happy Ashley-cita: check, checkity-check.

Next up in our series: the French Market, a silver guy and mas!

Wordless Wednesday

Restaurant Review: FINO

I chose this restaurant for the Husband's birthday dinner based on a great review from my boss. She has fabulous taste, so I knew that it wouldn't disappoint. And, after making the reservation, the Austin Chronicle named FINO one of the best restaurants in Austin! (2nd best only to Uchi which, believe me, is definitely deserving of the #1 spot.)

FINO from the outside.

Amuse bouche with an aperitif. The aperitif was very herbal tasting, but light and rather complementary to the cool pepper and zucchini/squash salad.

Our first small plate appetizer: fried goat cheese (in a tempura batter) with honey and an red onion relish. Also pictured: un pequito botella de vino. Fab.

Our second small plate: crab and avocado bruchetta. Cool, creamy... what's not to love?

The Husband chose the lamb for his entree. Delicioso! It was served with a roasted red pepper sauce, green beans and feta.

And, I had the roasted chicken breast served over cous-cous with a lemony yogurt sauce. Oh em gee. So good.

We finished off our meal with the much lauded meyer lemon tart, served with fresh blackberries and a blackberry and basil sorbet.

FINO: four very enthusiastic thumbs up.

Mmmmm... breakfast

Easy Cheese Danish

Originally from The Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
2 extra-large egg yolks, at room temperature Ashley-cita says: 2 large egg yolks are fine
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest: about 2 lemons Ashley-cita says: I did one large lemon and one small mandarin orange
2 sheets (1 box) frozen puff pastry, defrosted
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

(not pictured: the salt. Oh well.)
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.

Place the cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and cream them together on low speed until smooth.
With the mixer still on low, add the egg yolks, ricotta, vanilla, salt, and lemon zest and mix until just combined. Don't whip!

Unfold 1 sheet of puff pastry onto a lightly floured board and roll it slightly with a floured rolling pin until it's a 10 by 10-inch square. Cut the sheet into quarters with a sharp knife. Ashley-cita says: After making ginormous danishes this way, I tried cutting the sheet into nine even squares. This worked much better, in my opinion... Sorry, Ina!

Place a heaping tablespoon of cheese filling into the middle of each of the four nine squares.

Brush the border of each pastry with egg wash and fold 2 opposite corners to the center, brushing and overlapping the corners of each pastry so they firmly stick together.

Brush the top of the pastries with egg wash.

Place the pastries on the prepared sheet pan. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry and refrigerate the filled Danish for 15 minutes. Ashley-cita says: Uh, yeah, I totally skipped the refrigeration part. Didn't seem to harm them at all.

Bake the pastries for about 20 minutes, rotating the pan once during baking, until puffed and brown. Ashley-cita says: Rotate... uh... right. Didn't do that either.

Serve warm.
Ashley-cita says: Yuummmmmm!

#24: Paint living room

Completed: 04-12-09

In doing this 101 list, I'm learning quite a bit about myself. For example, I've learned that I am terrible at taking "before" shots of any painting/decoration projects.

How is that possible? Even if we hadn't lived in our wee house for more than 2 years now and even if we hadn't had several get togethers (with photo ops), one would think that one could just snap a few photos before commencing with the painting.

One would think.

Next time, I'll be sure to take a few "before" shots in advance of the change.

The colors we chose are Sherwin-Williams Clary Sage (living room) and Softened Green (alcove), SW 6177 and SW 6178, respectively. Here are the afters:









Two tones in the half-bath alcove. I'm adventurous!

My momma sent me these tulips for Easter because I'm her favorite she loves me. Awwww.

Snow's BBQ (pictures and review)

Last week, I promised a review and pictures. You know what happens when you put all your pictures on your husband's computer? It takes you another week before you get them onto your flash drive and onto your blog, that's what happens.

Anyway. The Great BBQ Hunt of 2009 started with this little magazine:

This little magazine told us that Snow's BBQ in Lexington, TX was/is the best BBQ in the whole state of Texas. Quite a statement, huh?

Naturally, we had to go check it out.

The Husband outside Snow's.

Ashley-cita outside Snow's. Do not let my glaring whiteness blind you. Also, please note the smile even though A) it's before 9:00am and B) I have not had any coffee.

This lady, Tootsie, gets up at lord knows what hour and gets the fire going in the pits by 3:00am. Three o'clock AM, people. That is dedication.

Hello, yummy, delicious, fantastical BBQ.


Hello, handsome. Please note the two people in front of The Husband. We arrived around 7:45am, and they were already there and waiting.

This door opened at 8:00am on the dot and we gathered up our BBQ (3 lbs of brisket, 1 lb of pork butt, 2 half chickens, 1 pint of potato salad and a cup of coleslaw).


Grumpy face because I had to smell that delicious smoked meat all the way home?! Boo.

The goods all bagged up, but home. Finally.

The feast with the magazine that started it all. See that water bottle? Yeah. That's Snow's BBQ sauce, all bottled up.

See?

A Southern girl knows that the only way to eat BBQ pork is on a white roll with coleslaw and a generous amount of sauce. Yummmmm!
Also pictured: brisket, chicken and potato salad.

To sum, if you're in the area, make a drive out to Lexington and pick up some Snow's BBQ. It's totally worth the early wake-up, honest.

Pictures (attempt 2)

Here's an exhibition game being played at the Round Rock Express Open House. They used replica uniforms from the 1860s (I think) and followed the rules from then, too. The ball is called the "rock" and a player is not "out," he is "dead." Wonder why they changed that?

And here's The Husband with the Express cow, signed by Nolan Ryan. He was being very patient with me this day, lol.


After all that excitement, we went to the Austin Rodeo! Horses and cattle and goats, oh my!

What exactly does "please make sure the sign is in the shot" mean to you? Oh well, at least it's a fairly cute picture of us. It was rather windy and chilly that day, although the sun was out and beautiful.


Here's my city boy looking at these two big ol' cows. I think this was the first time he had been so close to cattle.


And here's my favorite cow at the exhibit. Isn't she purty?

We also watched the goat judging competition, but all my photos of that are blurry. Those little goats move fast, I guess.

Coconut Cake

This was the cake I chose to make for our party to kickoff the holidays and to celebrate my birthday. Yes, I made my own birthday cake. Yes, it was totally worth it.

As anyone who's made an Ina Garten recipe knows, this cake required a lot of butter, eggs and sugar. Ah, and whole milk. I guess we should be thankful that she didn't go with heavy cream again. She must be in competition with Paula Deen. LOL. Recipe here.

The cake really was not that difficult and was absolutely delicious. The only edit I made to her recipe was with the cream cheese frosting. Ina uses a pound of confectioner's sugar and I used much less than that. We like our cream cheese frosting to be more tangy than sweet, thank you very much.